One of the most surprising things about Street Freak is that Dillian portrays the other traders as hugely status-obsessed. They're practically teenage girls, in the way they fret over the labels on their clothes and, more importantly, the labels on everyone else's clothes. So does the job make the person status-obsessed, or do status-obsessed people come to the job? "I think it does attract a lot of status-minded people, and if you’re there for a while, you start to buy" into the status thing, Dillian says.
Dillian didn't come into writing through the typical MFA route. "I lived in Port Angeles—and as you know, there’s not a lot to do in Port Angeles. There was a bookstore out there and they had all the Best American Short Story collections. I would just buy them and read." He cites John Updike and, especially, Barry Hannah as favorites. "I’m actually writing fiction right now. It is a novel, it’s about financial stuff. I’m almost done with the first chapter and I’m having a blast."
Street Freak was published just as nationwide Occupy protests were heating up. "From a marketing standpoint," Dillian says, "I think it hurt sales of the book. From my standpoint, it was a little bit annoying. I got ambushed a couple times" by Occupy groups at promotional events. "I wanted [Street Freak's publication] to be a happy time," but instead, "I had to talk about political stuff." So, um, what does he think of OWS overall? "Occupy Wall Street is about inequality. I think. You tell me." Ultimately, like the traders he used to work with, he thinks it comes down to perception and status: "I would think Occupy Wall Street wouldn't happen if everyone thought they could get into the top 1% like they used to."
The strongest writing in the book covers Dillian's mental breakdown and institutionalization for bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorders. Dillian has a knack for writing about mental illness; it's not a dramatic, operatic event that happens to him; it's more of a problem of accumulation, building from checking a couple times to make sure the front door of his house is locked before he runs to catch the bus to having to perform the same ritual over and over again for an hour or more before allowing himself to go to work. Dillian says the response to Street Freak from other traders has been good—"Wall Street people like it, because it makes them like Wall Street even more"—but the authenticity is what ultimately matters most to him. "Here’s what I’m most proud of with this book," he says, "not one person has come up to me and said 'that’s not true.'"
